


Remind Me

by LinguistLove_24



Category: Political RPF - US 21st c.
Genre: Angst, Elections, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Post Election
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-30
Updated: 2017-08-30
Packaged: 2018-12-21 17:02:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11948697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LinguistLove_24/pseuds/LinguistLove_24
Summary: "Yes," she whispered against his neck. "Remind me of something that doesn't hurt."Post election song fiction partially inspired by a Tumblr video.





	Remind Me

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Make Me A Robot](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11775363) by [lunandginny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunandginny/pseuds/lunandginny). 



> So, I said y'all may not get another fic from me until I could update Baby Steps and I'm apparently a big fat liar because this is what happened while I was being plagued by Insomnia. 
> 
> This was inspired by a couple of things: Sugarland's song 'Love' whose lyrics are in the piece and which I take no credit for. You can find that [here.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1X0o_naueI)
> 
> Second inspiration was the video onestarfishatatimeisme reblogged on Tumblr and showed up in my dash of Hillary talking to a little girl afraid of her parents being deported under Trump. She pulled her into her lap and actually said 'c'mere baby, let me do the worrying' that is in this piece. I loved it so much I knew I had to eventually incorporate it into a piece of fiction, so I did. Note that for the sake of the piece, the child's name has been fictionalised. I would link that clip also but I'm exhausted and don't want these notes to be even longer than they are becoming. 
> 
> This may be one of my favourite things I've written for the fandom, so I do hope you guys enjoy it.

**Remind Me**

 

Hillary's frame is hunched over as she sits stock still on the edge of the bed. Eyes unblinking and glossy, they possess the sheen that comes with tears not shed. Leather-backed journals - many whose spines had long ago become worn, papers' edges curled and frayed – lay in an alternating face up, face down line adjacent her. Reading them had proved not to be as healing as she'd believed it would. In the aftermath of all of this, remembering - even if it was by way of walking through the lanes of her own self preserved memories – was the hardest of all.

 

It happened often. In a vehicle on her way down a highway, when even the tinted windows and protection of the Service weren't enough to keep at bay the gnawing feeling that outsiders and bystanders could see right through to the deepest most vulnerable parts of her soul. Walking down the streets of Chappaqua as she held tight to Tally's leash, knuckles turning white and palms becoming slick with sweat as neighbours she'd known for years approached them. The pitch of her voice shifted, raised several octaves before she felt the smile manifesting on her lips becoming too big and artificial for her face to accommodate. A touch to the arm and a soothing murmur should have been appreciated. She was more than aware of these people - they knew her - but it was still early enough that asking if she were okay caused her to flinch.

 

In the wee hours of the morning, peaceful slumber whilst cocooned in the crook of her husband's arm was interrupted by cold sweat, the images of faces she could swear she'd known forever but also hardly knew at all assaulting her subconscious. The people came to her when she couldn't bear to see them. Smiling, laughing, crying. They were all there. Names flooded her during the most mundane of moments, for no reason at all. She remembered them, the feeling of having let them down. She would take that to the grave.

 

_Is it the face of a child?_   
_Is it the thrill of danger?_   
_Is it the kindness we see in the eyes of a stranger?_

The ends of porcelain toes curled into the carpeting before stretching out flat again, the ritual repeated several times over as though she needed something to do while her mind tried to come up with reasonable justification for continuously placing herself in the line of fire only to be burned to the core. Danger had followed her to many a location, the Service surrounding her at times becoming the only thing impeding her unintentionally dancing with it. For all the darkness and vile that inherently seemed to accompany politicians, it was a lie to assume there was not a single intermittent bout of kindness. They had found her, too, over the span of a decades long career, and she had done her best to return them.

 

Gripped by reverie and retrospect, she recalled the face of Luisa Hernandez – the fear that laced her deep brown eyes and squeezed Hillary's heart like a vice as she'd cried over the possibility of her parents being deported under the Republican administration.

 

_'C'mere baby,'_ her own words echoed in her ears. _'Let me do the worrying.'_ She had done. She'd worried for days after that conversation. Knots had formed in her stomach, tear drops like pinpricks at the backs of her eyes as she'd unintentionally and regularly called to mind the warmth of the shaking, frightened child she'd held against her chest. All she had wanted was to preserve that childhood innocence for just a moment longer, provide a shred of certainty to a young heart existing in such incredibly uncertain times. The thought of Luisa's parents' deportation coming to fruition still kept her awake some nights.

 

_Is it more than faith?_   
_Is it more than hope?_   
_Is it waiting for us at the end of our rope?_

Leaning back, she supported the bulk of her weight on the palms of her hands as they pressed heavily into the mattress. Several fingers accidentally brushed against one of the notebooks situated face up, stationery's edge slicing a paper cut through a digit. An audible hiss filled the room, her eyes stung for entirely different reasons and she was grateful for the distraction as traces of blood began to ooze from broken skin. The words covering the open page assaulted her peripheral as she took the injured phalange into the heat of her mouth and sucked.

 

Prayers, hymns and Bible verses. Some acquired in her extensive travels, extended to her as an act of kindness on the part of personal friends, or written down of her own accord in moments of reflective solitude. Most always, she'd found herself to be one with a very personal connection to a God. Standing in the ashes and rubble of loss, however, had seen questions she thought she'd never have to ask materialised. Was there a force greater than all of us out there? Did the Higher Power rejoice in our moments of suffering? Did it do any good to hope – as she had encouraged so many to do – if having it crushed by the weight of the world was an inevitability?

 

She didn't want to think about the end, knew it to be far off. Getting up and dusting herself off was what she always did. She couldn't do it yet, but in the distant future, she knew she would return to some semblance of normal and functioning. This was not the end. Even so, in the darkest of hours, she caught herself wondering what that end even meant. If it were as happy, free, and peaceful as the faithful and religious claimed it to be.

 

“Baby.”

 

The ruffling of papers caused her to jump as the soft spoken term of endearment met her ears and pulled her to the present. Bill had walked into the room, probably stood in the door jamb watching her for long, slow moments as helplessness engulfed him. Placing the innumerable journals in a careless heap off to one side, Bill crawled gently across the mattress and situated himself behind his wife. Long fingers wrapped themselves like a protective armour around her shoulders, tips resting just at her collarbones. The love and devotion in those fingertips sent shock waves through her nerve endings, but she could not look at him. So many times within the span of their union he had been the one to fail her, and now here she sat in the midst of a role reversal. He would insist to the contrary, that it was a whole different situation, much of the fault lying far and away from her shoulders. Everything he said was logical, and she heard it, but it didn't absolve her of the agony or make it any easier to swallow.

 

_Is it the one you call home?_   
_Is it the Holy Land?_   
_Is it standing right here holding your hand?_

_“_ Bill,” she croaked out, tongue thickened and mouth parched as she blindly waved a hand behind her in search of his fingers.

 

“What, honey?” he asked quietly as she found purchase and their extremities fused together. She felt light kisses trailing along the skin of her knuckles. “What is it?”

 

“I need you.”

 

Never had he heard three words sound so small, hollow and desperate. The organ that lay in a cavity within the walls of his chest beat extra hard to keep him alive, and he became aware for the umpteenth time just how often pain really was coalesced into the mere act of living.

 

He pulled her back into his front, so that his hot breath flitted over her earlobe as he attempted to take slow, even breaths. “You have me,” he told her forcefully. “You will _always_ have me. What is it that you need, Hillary? Tell me, and I'll do whatever I have to do.”

 

_Is it just like the movies?_   
_Is it rice and white lace?_   
_Is it the feeling I get when I wake to your face?_

 

“Lay with me?” She knew she didn't have to ask, but if she were honest she didn't know in the least what it was she actually needed. In the moment, all she wanted was to fill the silence, the aching void in the middle of her heart.

 

“Of course I will.”

 

Shuffling himself further backward, Bill created enough space to pull Hillary back and lay her head against the down of a pillow before situating her legs so they were stretched out comfortably. As he took up his own post in the same position next to her, he began running long, weathered digits through ever growing blonde locks.

 

She lay staring at him, seemingly captivated by the middle of his face. A short fingered, pale hand caressed and fanned out over a cheek. Thoughts of their small, intimate wedding ceremony flooded her psyche. So full of hope, promise and potential she – they – had been. She had since gained slightly different ideals of love, and life had bestowed upon her lessons she hadn't wanted to learn. Hindsight, though, was twenty-twenty. Still, four decades later, she found herself step for step alongside her best friend. The days of his disappointing her were long gone, and though they'd never be forgotten, she wouldn't choose anyone else.

 

“I love you,” Hillary said softly, swatting at a lone tear trickling downward just below her bottom eyelid.

 

“Me too,” Bill told her thickly, overcome by his own emotions. “So much.” He touched down on her lips and lingered there, as if to prove the validity of his statements.

 

_Is it the first summer storm?_   
_Is it the colours of fall?_   
_Is it having so little,_   
_and yet having it all?_

_“_ Would you change it?” Hillary spoke up tentatively after a while. Silence of a slightly more comfortable nature had enveloped them, and she found herself again lost in retrospective musings completely unrelated to one another: Maisie and Tally's frightened whimpering as they lay huddled together looking like a single, solid ball of fluff at their owners' feet during the height of a June thunderstorm. Wrapping a favourite overstretched Yale sweatshirt more tightly round herself as chill air whipped at her skin while hiking in the woods with Bill, changing colours of the leaves a considerable contrast to their shoes.

 

“What?” he asked groggily.

 

“This.” Hillary moved her eyes around the expanse of the room, attempting to clarify. “Our life.”

 

Bill thought for a moment, wanting to be honest in his answer.

 

“I don't think so, no. You?”

 

“Sometimes,” she told him.

 

“Really?”

 

“The lack of privacy and relentless scrutiny is something I often wish I didn't have to endure.” She snuggled closer to him, felt him dig his fingers deeper into her scalp and massage more forcefully. “They think you get used to it, but I'm not quite as much of an emotionless iron woman as the masses want to believe.”

 

Bill nodded, never halting his ministrations and looking to her with empathetic eyes. He knew they should be grateful for the abundance of wealth and opportunity their positions had afforded – and they were – but it had, and did, come at a high cost.

 

“Sometimes I think we'd be better off if we'd just stayed normal people,” Hillary said sleepily, sighing in content over her husband stroking her hair.

 

“Maybe,” Bill pondered. “But I don't think the people would.”

 

_Is it one in a million?  
Is it a chance to belong? _

 

“I really, really wanted that once in a lifetime opportunity,” she said, and Bill could tell she was close to drifting off. “I wanted to feel what you felt in '93.”

 

“I know sweetheart,” he soothed, slowing his strokes to her head. Sadness began to engulf him anew when he thought of just how well deserved that opportunity was. He knew she wanted it for the good of the people as well as herself.

 

“I hope some other woman will have it.”

 

Bill closed his eyes and exhaled, unable to picture anybody but his wife in the Oval, but hoping the same in the future.

 

  
“Someday,” he assured her. “It'll come.”

 

  
_Is it making you laugh?_  
 _Is it letting you cry?_  
 _Is it where we believe that we go when we die?_  
 _Is it how you were made?_  
 _Is it your mother's ghost?_  
 _Is it the wish that I'm wishing for your life, for your life, for your life the most?_

Watching his wife slowly drift off to sleep, he hoped that this round of slumber would not be painful or fitful. So many of her waking moments were spent with him at a loss as to what actions to take to ease her sufferings. Sometimes he wondered if he'd ever hear her laugh authentically again, others he longed for the flow of her tears and the wretched guttural sobs to cease. Wishing did not ever make it so – this much he knew – but he would never stop wishing for a different outcome for her, for the ability to absolve her of any of the wounds she'd carried with the strength of a soldier in the midst of battle.

 

Hillary lay with her eyes closed, scalp tingling as she thought of her mother. Bill undoubtedly thought she was asleep, and she made it look as though she were. She didn't have words to fill the silence or tasks to fill the void, and in these instances, rest (or pretending to so as not to be haunted by her dreams) came easily. Never had she missed so much the coffee and conversations she and Dorothy used to have. Her mother had once said that you could be the actor in your own life or allow other people to pull you into their drama. At the time, she'd believed it to be the best advice she'd ever gotten. In these trying times, she was struggling to follow it.

 

“I miss Mom,” she said out loud, and Bill startled a touch. It was not something he had heard her vocalise in a long time, though he knew Dorothy was never far from her mind. “I miss how she used to listen, you know?”

 

“I listen,” Bill said.

 

“I know you do,” Hillary said appreciatively. “But it's not the same.”

 

“Oh, I know babe. I do. You really should sleep, though.” He knew she hadn't been getting enough of it.

 

“I can't,” she told him. “Not really.”

 

“Okay,” Bill said, resigned. “Just lie back and relax.”

 

She did as instructed for short moments before becoming restless, agitated. Sidling closer to her husband, she began gently coaxing him on top of her.

 

“Hillary, honey...” Bill's voice trailed off as she allowed her legs to fall open so he could nestle himself more comfortably between them.

 

“I need you,” she told him. “Please.”

 

“Are you sure?” As much as he always wanted her, he was all too aware of her current state of fragility.

 

“Yes,” she whispered against his neck. “Remind me of something that doesn't hurt.”

 

The voice that escaped her was almost pleading, and he felt his breath hitch in his throat, fresh aches beginning to build up in his chest.

 

“True love never does,” Bill whispered in her ear as he swiftly laced their fingers and gently pinned her arms above her head. Always – be it in the midst of darkest hours or brightest suns – he would remind her of this.


End file.
